At present, there is an ongoing and ever increasing concern over the spread of infectious diseases and other biological or chemical hazards for infection control and/or the control of cross-contamination. Conventionally, persons suspected of being contaminated with chemical and/or biological agents are led into a decontamination tent, trailer, or pod, where they shed their potentially contaminated clothes in a strip-down room. They then enter a wash-down room and are showered. Finally, they enter a drying and re-robing room to be issued clean clothing, or a jumpsuit or the like. Such decontamination procedures are difficult to employ and impractical for routine washing or decontamination like that in a hospital.
Hand-washing in a hospital setting often employs soap and/or an antiseptic agent together with a specific scrubbing protocol. Chemical preparations (other than soap) for hand hygiene can be used, for example, chlorhexidine gluconate (clear/pink solution); iodine based preparations (brown); and aqueous alcoholic solutions (clear), though iodine based preparations have been known to cause skin irritation. For surgical procedures, hand-washing begins at the fingernails, where a nail file and brush from a sterile pack can be used. Scrubbing then occurs in three washing cycles: (a) hands and arms extending to two inches above the elbow; (b) hands and half way up the forearms; and (c) hands only. This follows the principle of washing from a clean area (the hand) in the direction of the less clean area (the arm). Hands should always be held above the level of the elbows at all times in order to prevent dirty water from dripping from the upper arm onto lower sterile areas.
Hospital-acquired infections are a major cause of illness and death, and impose serious economic costs on patients and hospitals. Indeed, health care-associated infections result in an estimated 90,000 deaths each year in the United States. Cross transmission is estimated to cause 40% of certain infections. Pathogens are readily transmitted on the hands of a healthcare worker, and effective hand hygiene substantially reduces this transmission. For decades, hand-washing has been universally accepted as one of the most important measures for preventing transmission of pathogens in health-care facilities and other community settings. However, compliance with established hand-washing guidelines remains poor. It is therefore necessary to improve the methods and systems of decontamination before a surgery or any other event where the spread of a chemical or biological hazard is possible.